Abstract
Management of water is evolving, due to water scarcity, and the reuse of wastewater treatment plant effluent is more and more investigated. New applications of the reuse such as the refilling of aquifer could be investigated. Soil aquifer treatment (SAT), sometimes used as natural advanced treatment, has shown some limitations for the removal of several contaminants of emerging concern (CECs). In this study, the investigation of a coupling advanced treatment process using nanofiltration followed by soil infiltration has been performed. The aim of the study was focused on the removal efficiency of the coupling treatment for 39 CECs. The CECs studied were detected in the wastewater treatment plant effluent and removal efficiencies were determined based on the natural concentrations of CECs without additional spiking. The coupling has shown interesting results allowing to increase the performances of the treatments used alone. While nanofiltration alone leads to a decrease of 80% of the total concentration of CECs adding soil infiltration increases the removal to 92%. 22 CECs out of the 39, detected in the effluent, are not detected after the coupling advanced treatment. However, few CECs such as carbamazepine, irbesartan or hydrochlorothiazide have shown limited removal despite the use of combined treatment.Keywords: Pharmaceutical, Advanced treatment process, Soil infiltration, Removal efficiency, Wastewater treatment plant effluent, LC-MS/MS.